Potatoes, of which there are well over one-thousand varieties, are starchy, edible tubers native to the South American Andes. Potatoes were introduced outside the Andes region over four hundred years ago and in that relatively short time has become one of the world's major food crops, following only rice, wheat, and corn. Reasons for this are that potatoes are nutritious, flavorful, and hardy. Potatoes can survive rough handling, can be stored for extended periods of time in a proper environment, and can grow in a very wide range of conditions and soils. Compared to most other crops potatoes take less land, effort, and money to grow sufficient food to feed a family.
Potatoes can be baked, stuffed, boiled, microwaved, fried, thrown on hot coals or placed under burning logs. They are suitable for appetizers, side dishes, and main dishes. They complement a very wide range of other food stuffs and can be served in a variety of ways.
One of the more challenging tasks associated with cooking potatoes is the pre-cooking preparation of the potato itself, which may require peeling the skin, as well as cubing, mashing and slicing the potato. Due to the relative firmness of potatoes, such preparatory actions usually require the use of knives, slicers, peelers and other hardware. Alternatively, pre-cooking preparation may merely involve puncturing the potato to facilitate the release of built up steam during subsequent heating of the potato. This is usually performed by introducing a set, or series, of punctures by piercing the potato with a rigid object. In this manner, as the potato is baked, microwaved or otherwise prepared, steam generated inside the potato is released via the punctures.
The traditional method of piercing potatoes is to simply jab fork tines into the potato. This traditional method of creating punctures through a potato has a number of significant drawbacks. For instance, using a fork with only a few fork tines may require the food preparer to manually force the fork tines into the potato multiple times to create a sufficient quantity of punctures. Furthermore, a food preparer's hands will tire very quickly piercing potatoes with fork tines. Moreover, there is a high risk that forks will be inadvertently bent, and there is a high risk of harm to the food preparer. In addition uniform cooking generally requires uniformly-spaced punctures, which is not likely to happen simply by using fork tines.
In view of the foregoing, there remains a need for a flexible, easy to use device for piercing potatoes. Beneficially, such a device would be both fast and safe. Preferably, such a device would also be suitable for low cost implementations and for uniformly puncturing potatoes.